Chapter 15 Marsh
Marsh
My phone is buzzing on my nightstand.
Still buzzing.
I hear it, yet it takes my body a few more seconds to wake up. Rolling over, I groan and see the name Oliver on my screen.
“What time is it?” I yawn.
“It’s almost seven. Are you still asleep?” Oliver laughs knowing very well I’m naturally up at five a.m. on weekdays. “Don’t you have work?”
“I’m awake, I’m awake.” I stretch. “I’m on assignment today.”
“I guess I just assume you’re working at all hours of the day,” Oliver says.
“What’s up?” I ignore him.
“Sadie wants to talk to you…one sec.”
Lucy and I were up until almost two a.m. live texting as we watched MasterChef.
It’s been two weeks since we agreed to be in a “relationship,” but it also feels like it’s been two months.
And lately, it seems like all I do is think about Lucy.
It’s like one day I woke up and she became the only thing I cared about.
Granted, we are spending a lot of time together, but I can’t gauge whether my consistent thoughts of her are because of the stories we’re working on, the upcoming wedding, or that for some reason we can’t keep our hands off each other like a couple of goddamn teenagers.
“Uncle Marsh?” Sadie’s high-pitched voice echoes through my phone.
“Dee Dee?” I mimic my niece’s energy.
“It’s me!” she says. “Daddy says I can only talk to you for three minutes because I have to go to school…But guess what happened to me this morning!?”
“Uh.” I pretend to be stumped. “You made your bed?”
“No!” She lets out a laugh. “Guess again!”
“Ummm.” I move an arm underneath my head, adjusting myself on my pillow. “You…won the lottery?”
“What’s the lottery?” she asks.
“The lottery is something that your parents are fortunate enough to never have to play,” I say. One day she’ll realize the benefit of both Oliver and Quinn being commercial architects.
“I lost a tooth!” she shrieks.
“What! You did?!”
“And guess what? Daddy said that the tooth fairy will come tomorrow and give me money.”
“She sure will,” I say.
“Uncle Marsh,” Sadie pauses. “Why does the tooth fairy need my tooth?”
I try to remember the tooth fairy lore. “I think she uses it to build her house,” I say. Yeah, that sounds right.
“Why?”
Great question. What kind of morbid children’s story were they telling us? “Because it’s too expensive to use wood or bricks,” I say confidently.
“How many teeth does she need to build her house?”
“A lot,” I say. “So keep leaving the rest of your teeth under your pillow when they’re ready.”
Sadie pauses again. “The tooth fairy doesn’t have anywhere to live…”
“No.” I laugh. “She’s just…working on an expansion.”
“What’s an expansion?” she asks.
“Ask your parents,” I say. Oliver and Quinn are much more capable of speaking to that than I am.
“Okay. Time for school! Bye, I love you, Uncle Marsh!”
“I love you, Dee Dee.”
“Oh!” Sadie says. “Are you coming to my birthday?”
“Of course I’m coming. Even if the tooth fairy pulled out all my teeth, that couldn’t stop me.”
“Daaaaad!” Sadie yells on the other end.
I hear some muffled talking as I sit up, waiting.
“Did you tell Sadie that the tooth fairy is going to pull out all her teeth and build a house out of them?” Oliver says.
“I mean, not verbatim.”
“She wants to pull out the rest of her baby teeth to help with the tooth fairy’s expansion…” he says slowly.
“You’ve got an empathetic kid there, Ollie.”
“Where did you get the house-made-out-of-teeth bit?”
“Isn’t that what it’s for?” I ask, standing by my assumption. “I swear I read that somewhere.”
“No! The fuck?”
“You should be thanking me. This could lead her on a very successful path to being an orthodontist.”
“Anyway,” Oliver says, ignoring me, “Quinn feels bad about Julia coming next weekend.”
Truthfully, I forgot about that detail, and I’m oddly not as upset about it as I was two weeks ago. When we had that call, Lucy was just a woman I met at a bar. It’s crazy how much can happen in such a short amount of time.
“Tell Quinn it’s seriously fine,” I say. “I, uh, I’m actually going to be bringing someone if that’s okay.”
There’s a beat of silence on Oliver’s end. “Like a female someone?”
“Yes…is that okay?”
“Are you going to give me any details?” Oliver asks. “I thought you were against dating and now you’re bringing someone to meet the family?”
While I could easily tell Oliver what’s going on between Lucy and me, I don’t for the same reason I don’t want to show up to Julia’s wedding alone: It’s embarrassing.
I don’t want to have to tell my big brother that I don’t have it in me to show up solo or that I’m not capable of finding a date on my own.
“It’s nothing serious, Ollie,” I say.
“It sounds serious if you’re letting her meet Mom.”
“Introducing her to Mom doesn’t mean I’m proposing to her,” I rebut.
“Okay, well, yeah, of course you can bring her,” Oliver says. “I’m happy for you!”
“I promise, it’s nothing serious,” I insist. “We’ve just been seeing each other for a little bit and I’m enjoying her company, all right?”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. So, what’s her name? How’d you meet?”
“Lucy,” I say and kind of hate the way my cheeks begin to feel warm. “We met at a bar.”
“What does she do?”
“She’s also a writer, and she’s so good, Ollie,” I say. “She writes about sex and relationships. I don’t know, I’ve never read about that kind of stuff before, but it’s been giving me this whole new perspective.”
“That’s awesome,” Oliver says. I’m expecting maybe a quip or something about her topics of choice, but he doesn’t say anything. “I’m excited to meet her.”
“Yeah, it’ll be fun,” I say and then pause. “Have you, uh, talked to Mom recently?”
“Not since last week,” Oliver says. “She’s coming here Wednesday, though. Are you going to give her a heads-up about Lucy?”
“I don’t think so.” I tip my head back and look up at my ceiling. Things with my mom this past year have been…complicated. Julia was the daughter she never had, and my mom’s the one person who hasn’t fully accepted our breakup. “She’s still convinced Julia’s going to call off the wedding.”
“Shit,” Oliver says under his breath. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.” I shrug. “I’m hoping next weekend will sort of open her eyes to the fact that I’m out there seeing other people. I’ve moved on.”
“Yeah, well, let me know if you need anything, okay? We’re excited to see you.”
“You too, Ollie.”
I pull up to another coffee shop, this time at Melrose Place.
It’s eleven a.m. on a Monday and it’s packed.
At least twice a day I’ll find myself wondering what people in LA do for work.
Lucy’s already sitting on the patio, typing on her laptop with an iced tea of some sort on the table.
She’s wearing a denim on denim outfit with those red jelly flats, and my instinct is to take a picture of her. Obviously, I don’t.
I deserve an Olympic medal for restraining myself anytime I’m near her.
After the night at The Peppermint Club and then her straddling me on my couch, it’s blatantly clear that the two of us have a physical connection.
It doesn’t matter, though, because she’s now a source on my story and sitting in on another interview today.
You don’t fantasize about the way your source feels when they sit on your lap. You just don’t.
“Hey,” I say. “How’s it going?”
Lucy looks up and her face breaks out into a smile. A smile that feels brighter than the sun already shining. A smile that’s making me think weird thoughts like how she’s brighter than the sun. Lord.
“Good,” she says. “I decided to come here a little earlier and just do some writing.”
“Relationship story?” I ask.
“Actually, how running clubs are the new trendy way to meet people to hook up with.”
“Should I join a running club?” I take a seat across from her.
“Hey!” She playfully kicks me under the table. “You are spoken for, mister! At least for the next three weeks.”
“All right, I’ll hold off until then.” I tip my chin toward her drink. “Is that any good?”
“Here, try some. It’s a mango passion fruit tea.” She passes me the ice-cold cup that feels great in today’s heat.
I take a sip and am aware we’re drinking from the same straw. There’s a sweet, fruity taste, and I’m now wondering if her lips taste just like this drink.
“Mm, that’s good.”
“Have it,” she says. “I’ve had enough caffeine today.”
I look at my watch and make note that my interview with Brixley Carter, which Lucy was luckily also available for, isn’t for another ten minutes.
“So, I was talking to my brother this morning,” I say.
“Oliver.” Lucy points at me like she’s remembering an answer to a test.
“I told him that you’d be coming to Sadie’s birthday.”
“Wow, okay.” Lucy closes her laptop. “Big step. How do you feel?”
“It feels good,” I answer honestly. “It felt natural.”
“That’s great, Marsh!” She smiles and gives me a hand squeeze from across the table. “Big moves happening in the fake dating world.”
“I was thinking we should go there in the morning and if we leave by five p.m., we should be able to be back in LA before midnight depending on traffic.”
“So, I was thinking,” Lucy says, “what if we stayed the night?”
“In Palo Alto?”
“Yeah.” She nods. “We could spend Sunday in San Francisco, and I can write a piece about weekend vacations and how to rekindle the spark or some bullshit like that.”
The idea of walking along Fisherman’s Wharf with Lucy, having lobster rolls and ice-cream cones, and driving through the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito—all the things that I would normally avoid doing—sounds more exciting than it should.
“Okay, let’s do it.”
“Amazing.”
“Marshall?” I hear a voice behind me.
Turning around, I see Brixley Carter waving. She’s only twenty-three years old and one of the most popular OnlyFans models, making an easy six figures in the past year.
“Brixley, hi.” I stand up and gesture for her to take one of the empty seats. “It’s so nice to meet you. Thank you for chatting with us. This is Lucy Reid. She’s another writer and helping me with this story.”